We're A Happy Family

Arsenal walked out into the impound yard and began to take stock of the captured vessels. One by one, he gestured towards the impounded space-ships and levitated them to an open patch of concrete. Soon he had a line of six nearly identical one-man vessels.

He retrieved his hand-held computer from his belt and began to examine the craft carefully. After a few moments, he began to disassemble two of them, taking pictures of their internal components with his computer's built-in camera.

The vessels were modular, constructed from bits and pieces linked together with general-purpose connectors. Additional, unused connectors were present in the interiors of the one-man space-ships; he was particularly interested in the connectors on the underside of the vessels' stubby wings.

His next stop was a battered, worn terminal in the hallway of the police station. He logged in with his Honor Guard credentials, and connected to the regional police blotter database. He sketched out a simple query on the terminal screen, and synced a table of ships recently lost to pirates in the Suburbia system to his hand-held.

He stopped for a moment when he saw the record for a freighter loaded with bug bombs, lost with all hands. It was flagged with a marker indicating suspected paranormal activity. He followed the key to a list of known paranormal operatives in the area.

Four hits came up -- Demonslayer, Killotron, Bearcat, and Jinx Bubastis had all been sighted repeatedly in the last five cycles. Demonslayer's picture had her in her exoskeleton with an extra pair of robotic arms that helped her wield her energy shield and sword. Arsenal briefly boggled at how different her normal M.O. was from the spellcaster his team had just fought. Recalling the immediate hits for munitions thefts, he knew Killotron would be fully armed, possibly with tacnukes. Jinx had attacked several ships, and there were forensic and psychic traces confirmed on several scuttled and looted cargo vessels. He glanced at Bearcat's picture and called Jolt.

"Ma'am, we have a problem. Our Demonslayer may be a fake."

"What?" Jolt seemed irritated.

"There are current surveillance camera records with sightings of Demonslayer, Bearcat, and Killotron, tons of pirate activity, missing nukes, paranormal activity in the system. I think something big is happening."

"What does this have to do with a fake Demonslayer?" Jolt was impatient.

"Demonslayer usually fights with a four-armed exoskeleton and magic weapons. There's paranormal pirate activity--"

"You think the old woman we have in holding is someone else?"

"It's possible. There's a whole team of them." Arsenal flipped through the records, reading quickly. "They call themselves M-Seven. Officially, they are a charitable organization operating homeless shelters in the area around the East Pole."

"You told me you would check in with the crew working on the Nighstalker. What are you doing?" Jolt was angry.

Arsenal shrunk back, rebuked.

"Why aren't you where you said you'd be?"

"I was examining the vessels in the impound yard."

"Why that?"

"They seem a little over-engineered to be hot rods." Arsenal was rather flustered.

"Uh-huh. Arsenal, normal men like big cars with big engines. It makes them feel important, and lets them go into orbit for jobs. Concentrate on finding out what you did to the Nightstalker instead of wasting our time like this. We'll confirm Demonslayer's identity and call for re-inforcements in the meantime. Jolt out."

"Understood. Arsenal out."

Arsenal pocketed his hand-held computer, shook his head, and headed out to the spaceport. As he came outside, he stopped a moment to watch the running lights of the traffic heading out to the orbital factories, circling until they received clearance for orbital insertion. The dance of the running lights fascinated him; he watched a small personal cargo vessel shoot up through the twilight skies, now only lightly streaked with clouds.

He continued to another low concrete bunker across the dusty courtyard. A cop in powered armor stood guard before the entrance; he recognized Arsenal and saluted.

Arsenal descended into a musty corridor whose ceiling was obscured by recently-repaired ductwork. Provisional lights clipped to the walls illuminated the way until he came to a brightly-lit atrium. In the corner, a clone was cleaning the floors; he looked up at Arsenal for a moment, showing a brief flash of recognition that vanished the moment Arsenal stepped into the brightly lit room. The clone returned to his chores.

Arsenal came to a door, which opened automatically. He entered a darkened office, lit by a pair of holographic displays showing various views of the Nightstalker.

The man behind the desk could have been Arsenal's twin brother. He was dressed in loose-fitting grey coveralls, and held up one hand as Arsenal entered the room.

Arsenal took the hint and waited at the corner of the desk as the Type 350 clone saved his work and looked up at his visitor. For a brief moment, Arsenal and the man behind the desk sized each other up, exchanging subtle cues of posture and patterns of eye contact in a fraction of a second, instinctual behavior conditioned in the clone vats. Preliminary handshake completed, they hastily introduced themselves, and the man at the desk rose a little from his seat and extended his hand. "Hello. I'm Randall Cat -- chief of operations at the shipyard here. You?"

Arsenal shook Randall's hand, and Randall sat back down. "My name is Peter Cat. I used to work on the plasma weapons design team, now I'm attached to Honor Guard, codename Arsenal."

Formalities satisfied, Randall leaned back and looked his twin brother in the eye. "So -- what can I do for you?"

"How's the Nighstalker looking?" Arsenal folded his hands in front of him, trying not to invade his colleague's work area any more than he absolutely had to.

"Great! I was expecting all kinds of battle damage, but it looks really good. The initial tests have all been positive. The only big anomaly is some missing time on the ship's log, so I'm having the staff run a burn-in cycle on the computers. Assuming nothing strange happens, you should be good to go in about ten standard hours."

"That's good." Arsenal smiled a little.

"What's wrong with your team-mates? They seem to think you sabotaged the ship."

Arsenal paused for a moment, and decided to change the subject. "Have you had a look at the ships in the impound yard?"

"We're understaffed and overworked out here. Until Captain Kelrast gives us a work order, my staff has enough to do as is." Randall seemed genuinely sorry, and gave Peter a second glance.

"I've taken some pictures of the hot-rods captured in raids -- the design is... interesting."

Randall smiled a little. "I'm curious. I can give you half an hour."

Arsenal placed his hand-held computer on the desk, and Randall connected to it and began reviewing the holograms. Randall immediately fixated on the connectors under the winglets. "That looks like a weapons mount."

"That's what I thought, but it's a little out of my area."

Randall pointed at a series of small receptacles surrounding the connector. "Those are attachment points for a semi-articulated gun mount -- if it were for a storage battery or a cargo pod, they wouldn't bother putting them there."

Arsenal pulled up the cargo manifests of the ships recently lost to piracy. "Check this out. Recent losses include storage batteries, mini jump drives, a consignment of nuclear demolitions charges..."

Randall looked confused. "Bug bombs? Weird. Wouldn't be my first choice to arm a fighter."

Arsenal concurred. "Yeah, and they're no good for piracy -- who wants to loot a contaminated wreck?"

Randall frowned and looked at his desktop clock. "We don't have a whole lot of time. I'm going to make a few assumptions and see what I can put together with the stolen cargo and this spaceframe." Working together, they assembled the parts; Randall filled in the few unknowns from his considerable experience.

Randall leaned back in his chair and squinted at the hologram. "That's... not bad. It'd have about 75% of the specific impulse of a front-line fighter, which means it wouldn't be a sitting duck. It's not something I'd want to fly, but it wouldn't be completely useless in a dogfight."

"How much work would it take to get one of these armed and charged up?" Arsenal copied the simulation data to his hand-held.

"Not too much, the big problem is logistics and process. They'd need some manufacturing capability to make adaptors for the scavenged parts, and lots of space to do the assembly. Listen, I've got some test results coming in now. Can I keep a copy of your data to play with later?"

"Sure. I've got to check in with Jolt. Thanks for your time!" Arsenal left the office as Randall Cat fell back into his work. The junkyard star-fighter disappeared from the holographic displays, and the Nightstalker returned.

Arsenal proceeded back to the courtyard, striding quickly through the corridor until he reached the bunker exit. He tapped the cheap black plastic housing of his computer nervously.

"Jolt, Arsenal here. The Nightstalker will be ready in ten hours."

"That's nice. The woman we captured is Demonslayer, we've confirmed it. A dropship with reinforcements is on the way in case M-Seven tries to break her out."

"I'm going to send you a simulation I put together with the chief of staff -- I think they're building a fleet of star-fighters in the abandonded factories around here. I'd like to see if I can find any evidence around here."

"Good. I think we can manage, just make it quick. Jolt out."

Arsenal paused for a moment, relieved, before he took off into the sky, following the power conduits that stretched off into the distance.